Team Foundation SDK for VS 2010

Team Foundation SDK for VS 2010

We have just published the first increment of the Team Foundation SDK for VS 2010. Several months ago, I commented on the negative trend we have seen for the TF SDK content, and I explained that we had started an effort to attempt to turn that around by taking a very different approach. We're experimenting and we'll watch feedback to see what works as we continue to build this content. There are two parts of that effort:

I've rerwtitten the conceptual portion of the SDK to focus on getting you started by providing critical information and some sample code. For example, Create a Console Application that Connects to Team Foundation Server has a sample that connects to TFS and lists team project collections and team projects. The topic provides information that you probably will need to take the next step in your code: the interfaces & classes that you can obtain using GetServiceInstance<>()? I ignored conventions that sometimes made the old content more wordy than useful. The APIs aren't broadly covered in this section of the SDK. Instead, the critical concepts are covered, and in some of those cases, I've referenced community content. The section on work item tracking is the most developed. I've replaced 30 small topics with 5 slgihgly longer topics. I've also included the samples inline so there's nothing to download. Of course, new features like the extended query capabilities are covered. (Finding Bugs, Tasks and Other Types of Work Items by Using the Work Item Tracking Query Language and the Client Object Model). I also added a topic that talks about dealing with different types of work items. There's still more to do for work item tracking, and the other areas are much less developed than this.

The development team added comments to many of the public APIs, and we are now publishing the API reference content based on those comments, having done some editorial work. (See Team Foundation API Reference in Extending Team Foundation). We will invest some time in raising the quality of the most critical of these reference topics. We'll watch the feedback on these topics to help us determine how to balance that effort with the effort to broaden the coverage to more APIs.

As I've said before, these changes are intended to address the feedback that we've recieved about the TF SDK. We'll watch the feedback that you leave on this new content and adjust our plans accordingly. To leave feedback on a topic, do one of the following:

- In Lightweight view, scroll to the bottom of the page, and the click Feedback. The first two questions are about the help experience. Use the third question to rate the topic (1 is bad, 5 is good), and include your comments in Tell us More.

- You can also come back to this blog post and leave comments about the new TF SDK content here.

Let us know what is working and what isn't using one of those methods. We're watching for it, and it'll help shape what we do in the upcoming releases. If you leave your email in the comment, we'll follow up with you to clarify any questions we have about your comments.